Meet the New Version of Google Analytics

This week Google announced the launch of a new and improved version of Google Analytics, the world’s most widely used web analytics service. This new version, called Google Analytics 4, builds on the App + Web property launched last year:

To help you get better ROI from your marketing for the long term, we’re creating a new, more intelligent Google Analytics that builds on the foundation of the App + Web property we introduced in beta last year. It has machine learning at its core to automatically surface helpful insights and gives you a complete understanding of your customers across devices and platforms.

Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is a complete update of the platform and takes over from the previous generation called Universal Analytics which was launched back in October 2012. The image below shows some of the updated areas of Google Analytics which are split out by customer life cycle stage – Acquisition, Engagement, Monetization and Retention.

As Search Engine Land reports the new Google Analytics offers deeper integration with Google Ads including the ability to maintain audiences between Web and Apps. Other updates include the ability to measure more on-site or in-app actions without the need for Google Tag Manager and more options for Data Controls to help with GDPR compliance.

Machine Learning

One of the core elements of the new Google Analytics is the inclusion of more insights and predictions based on Google’s Machine Learning algorithms. Vidhya Srinivasan, Google’s Vice President of Measurement and Analytics said in the announcement:

By applying Google’s advanced machine learning models, the new Analytics can automatically alert you to significant trends in your data – like products seeing rising demand because of new customer needs. It even helps you anticipate future actions your customers may take. For example, it calculates churn probability so you can more efficiently invest in retaining customers at a time when marketing budgets are under pressure.

 

We’re continuing to add new predictive metrics, like the potential revenue you could earn from a particular group of customers. This allows you to create audiences to reach higher value customers and run analyses to better understand why some customers are likely to spend more than others, so you can take action to improve your results.

Getting Started with GA4

All newly created Google Analytics properties will use the new experience by default. If you have an existing GA account and you want to look at the new features you can set up a new property alongside your existing ones.